Practical Theology/
Worship

God created us to worship him, which is His prerogative as God (Ps. 95:6; Rev. 4:11; 14:7). Humans are at their best when they are worshipping the triune God, just as they are at their worst when …Read More

As birthdays go, it’s a big one. It is fitting and appropriate that we would mark the five-hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Calvin. Trouble is, that occasion is being marked in at least two different ways. First …Read More

In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor offers this insight into fallen human nature: “So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.” Though the Grand …Read More

I remember well the student’s written response during a summer course on the church and sacraments. One of the course goals was to help students understand biblical and theological guidelines for worship. The response was both encouraging and dismaying …Read More

In those fundamentalist churches in which I was raised, most Sunday mornings the minister preached from a well-worn Bible, told a few stories to illustrate his point and then reminded us that Jesus is our only hope of heaven. But …Read More

Wherever people come together to worship God, whether it be on a desert island or in a burgeoning metropolis, whether it be on the plains of Africa or in the cold winter of Siberia, people are concerned to worship Him …Read More

“Now set your mind and heart to seek the LORD your God” (1 Chron. 22:19). All sin is idolatry because every sin is an exercise in trust of something or someone other than the one true God to satisfy …Read More

The inner essence of worship is treasuring Jesus as infinitely valuable above everything. The outer forms of worship are the acts that show how much we treasure God. Therefore, all of life is meant to be worship because God said …Read More

In an unlikely encounter with an immoral Samaritan woman, our Lord Jesus uttered one of most important statements ever made about worship. In John’s deeply moving account of Jesus’ meeting with the woman at the well, after Jesus uncovers …Read More

One of the most important questions a person can ever ask is “Whom or what am I worshipping?” In Romans 1:21–23, Paul says that to worship anything or anyone other than the true God is evidence of futile …Read More

The church growth movement mandates “contemporary worship” styles, which means, in practice, replacing hymns with “praise songs.” These consist of simple lyrical phrases, often repeated, set to a simple tune in the style of pop music. The problem with …Read More

I am notoriously bad at remembering anniversaries, and last year it was quite a surprise to discover that 2008 marked the fiftieth anniversary of my ordination to the Christian ministry. Not that the occasion was other than memorable. Indeed it …Read More

Dear Naberus,
Aren’t these wonderful times to be in the temptation business? The hyper-consumerism of modern times virtually does our work for us, as it converts our targets’ social lives into commodities that serve personal happiness, whether jobs or …Read More

Three-quarters of the way through the twentieth century, Francis A. Schaeffer asked the question, “How should we then live?” His book of the same name answered the questions raised by the radical shift in our culture from modernity to post-modernity …Read More

Sadly, I must admit the unfortunate truth that I am a former member of a boy band. In January of 1993 I was chosen to be one of the first members of the pop group “The Backstreet Boys.” As a …Read More